Christmas, Christianity and Communities

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your guidance, Dame Maria, and a privilege to follow several hon. Friends, in particular my friend the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) for being bold enough to secure this debate, and for delivering a great speech. I hope that I have done nothing that he needs to forgive me for.

Christmas, Christianity and community are all massively important. It is great to have this debate at this time of year. Over the past few days, I have had the joy of visiting Christmas markets at Shap and Orton, and Grange Christmas tree festival, where I gave a little talk. I read a lesson at Kendal parish church carol service, and attended the wonderful nativity at Kendal’s Dean Gibson Roman Catholic Primary School, which included the privilege of giving the award to the winner of my Christmas card competition, Anna Kay. Her design of a Herdwick sheep inside a Christmas wreath—it could not be more Lake district—is being delivered by our wonderful volunteers to 40,000 houses.

I visited several other schools that had taken part in the competition, and joined in their Christmas celebrations. What a joy all of that is. At my church in Kendal, our Christmas celebrations reach many more people than would normally attend our services. I know that is the case for churches the length and breadth of Westmorland and Lonsdale and, indeed, the whole country. I do not need any persuading that Christmas is important to communities, locally and nationally. It brings us together, family by family, street by street, village by village, town by town.

The shared acknowledgement of the importance of this festival as a time of rest and a time for family is significant for the collective life of our country. However, for those working in healthcare, social care, the police, the fire services, hospitality and many other professions, including some in my close family, it is a time of continued, if not enhanced, busyness. We are grateful to all those people; we pay tribute to them and thank them.

Traditions are important, and we have them in our family. We decorate a tree in the midst of the woods near our home in Westmorland. We do the same family walk every year on Christmas eve. We share the annual festive disappointment of an en masse family trip to Blackburn Rovers, and we watch the same films over and over. Without even checking, I know the entire script of “Home Alone” and “Home Alone 2”—not “Home Alone 3” or “Home Alone 4”, because they are abominations.

[Jim Shannon]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tim Farron]

Happily. Is the hon. Gentleman a defender of “Home Alone 3”?

[Jim Shannon]

No, the most wonderful Christmas film is “It’s a Wonderful Life”, with James Stewart. That tells everything about everyone’s story, and how people influence one another. That is what we do in this House, so to me, that is the best Christmas film ever.

[Tim Farron]

I would say it is a tie between “Home Alone 2”—because I think Tim Curry makes it—and “It’s a Wonderful Life”. The other tradition on Christmas eve is watching “It’s a Wonderful Life”; then I sit around with my brothers-in-law and watch the “Father Ted” Christmas special—I know all the words to that, too.

Some decry the loss of the Christian message from Christmas, seeing that as an undermining of British values. I understand that concern, although I do not think it is anything particularly new. Commercialism and escapism have been displacing the Christmas message for decades if not longer, and a nice, feel-good, schmaltzy, vague magic has been allowed to displace the meaning of the nativity for longer than I have been alive, at least. I have had the best parents, but I was not brought up to go to church, although I was raised in an era when the assumption was that we believed in God—probably the Christian version. Nevertheless, the first Christmas story that I remember having read to me as a very small child was “The Night Before Christmas”, which begins:

“’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse”.

I remember the thrill of being read that by my mum, as I perched on my bed on Christmas eve, ready to be tucked up. I was aged three and a half. There was an empty stocking hanging expectantly, and a tingling sense of excitement. Lovely and traditional though it was, it has no more to do with the Christian message of Christmas than “Home Alone”, “Love Actually”, “Elf”, or any of the other stories that we enjoy at this time of year, so before we get too upset about Christmas being joylessly erased by winter festivals and all that, let us not forget that the Christian message has always been seen as something of an inconvenience—something uncomfortable to be brushed aside, whether it is Christmas or not. In fact, Christmas is one of those rare occasions when you can more easily get away with talking about Christianity. This debate is a case in point.

My contention is that Christianity has always been and always is counter-cultural. It is meant to be. It is deeply disturbing and even offensive. I am reminded of Lucy asking Mr Beaver about Aslan in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”. She asks nervously, “Is he a tame lion?” “Oh no,” says Mr Beaver, “he’s not tame, but he is good.” He is good. Jesus is not tame; Christianity is not tame; and Christmas is not tame, but He is, and they are, good. I would say to people: if you are prepared to allow yourself to be disturbed and offended, you will discover that He is good—good for you, even.

Christmas is all about stories: there is Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol”—best performed, of course, by the Muppets—“It’s a Wonderful Life”, the “Home Alone” films and the many legends of Father Christmas and the trials of his reindeer. The Christmas story, however, is a different kind of tale altogether. It is told in just two of the gospels in the New Testament—Matthew and Luke—and the jarring thing is that the writers expect us to believe that the nativity is history. Just before Luke launches into the account of the nativity, he starts his book with this:

“Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.”

Those four short verses tell us something pretty shocking about the story that is to follow, in which the God of the universe writes himself into our story. He comes into the world that he created as a baby, born in poverty in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire. He comes into the world for one chief reason: to suffer and die in our place, so that sinful human beings can be forgiven our wretchedness and have eternal life. Luke’s verses tell us that this story cannot be a fairy story. It cannot be a fable or a feel-good, festive yarn. Given Luke’s introduction, this story can only reasonably be one of two things: fact or fabrication. When we look more carefully into the evidence of the eyewitnesses, we see that fabrication soon falls away as a plausible theory, too.

Maybe we get a shiver down our spine when we think of the magic of Christmas. How much more of a shiver might we get if we realised that what we read about in the nativity is true? The fact that millions have accepted that continues to be crucial to our society. The nativity tells the story of a teenage mum who, along with her husband and new child, becomes a refugee from a tyrant, lost in an empire that cares little for them and that values them as nothing more than tax fodder. There is so much there for so many people to identify with. It is a reminder that God never considers us an irrelevance or an insignificant and anonymous number; every hair on our head is numbered, and our names are written on the palm of His hands. Commercialism and escapism will not make Christmas mean anything, really.

Maybe our difficulty is that we feel inclined to miss Christmas, or at least to celebrate less, because, after all, look at the state of the world—what is there to celebrate? God looked at the world and saw the mess it was in. He did not hide under the covers; He entered in at enormous cost, because He loves us. Christians are to be the hands and feet of Jesus in our communities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, running the food banks, providing support for those in debt or poverty, housing the homeless, befriending the lonely, and loving our neighbour in practical ways. That is not because we seek to earn God’s favour, but in joyful response to the fact that by His Grace, we already have it, and Christmas proves that we have it.

If the Christmas story is true, yes, it is disturbing, but it means that there is justice. It means that evil does not win; good does. It means that there is love beyond our wildest dreams. It means that there is ultimate truth, and that there is meaning in every life, and in every part of every life. It means that human rights actually exist. They are not just a passing 21st-century fashion; they are the invention of the inventor of everything. Because we have ultimate dignity of bearing the image of God, that means every other human being does, too. No Parliament, President, despot or dictator can change that one jot.

Christmas is also a time of personal sadness for some. It may be the time when we feel the loss of loved ones the most. Christmas is a time of great joy for me, but all the same, this Christmas will be my 20th without my mum. I mentioned earlier that the first story I remember my mum reading to me was “The Night Before Christmas”, and the last thing I read to my mum in her hospital bed was this from the last book in the Bible, the Revelation:

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with humans, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’”

If Luke is to be believed that the nativity is eyewitness testimony, we can believe those things, too. It means that there is real hope, even for a scumbag like me. Happy Christmas.